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I Acted On My Belief That The Nsa's Mass Surveillance Programs Would Not Withstand A Constitutional Challenge, And That The American Public Deserved A Chance To See These Issues Determined By Open Courts. Today, A Secret Program Authorized By A Secret Court Was, When Exposed To The Light Of Day, Found To Violate Americans' Rights. It Is The First Of Many.

-Edward Snowden

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I Acted On My

Edward Snowden

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I Acted On My Belief That The Nsa's Mass Surveillance Programs Would Not Withstand A Constitutional Challenge, And That The American Public Deserved A Chance To See These Issues Determined By Open Courts. Today, A Secret Program Authorized By A Secret Court Was, When Exposed To The Light Of Day, Found To Violate Americans' Rights. It Is The First Of Many.

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I Think That's Actually What's Missing From Government, For The Most Part. We've Got A Lot Of Policy People, But We Have No Technologists, Even Though Technology Is Such A Big Part Of Our Lives. It's Just Amazing, Because Even These Big Silicon Valley Companies, The Masters Of The Universe Or Whatever, Haven't Engaged With Washington Until Recently. They're Still Playing Catch-up.

The Question That We, As A Society, Have To Ask Is, Are Our Collective Rights Worth A Small Relative Advantage In Our Ability To Spy On Other Countries And Foreign Citizens? I Have My Opinion About That, But We All Collectively Have To Come To Our Opinion About It.

The Iraq War That I Signed Up For Was Launched On False Premises. The American People Were Misled. Now, Whether That Was Due To Bad Faith Or Simply Mistakes In Intelligence, I Can't Say For Sure. But I Can Say It Shows The Problem Of Putting Too Much Faith In Intelligence Systems Without Debating Them In Public.

I Don't Want To Directly Confront Great Powers, Which We Cannot Defeat On Their Terms. They Have More Money, More Clout, More Airtime. We Cannot Be Effective Without A Mass Movement, And The American People Today Are Too Comfortable To Adapt To A Mass Movement.

If I Had To Guess What The Future's Going To Look Like For Me - Assuming It's Not An Orange Jumpsuit In A Hole - I Think I'm Going To Alternate Between Tech And Policy.

The Charges [government] Brought Against Me, For Example, Explicitly Denied My Ability To Make A Public-interest Defense.

Technology Provides Us Means Outside Of Governments To Begin Enforcing Our Rights, Enforcing Protection Of Civil Liberties, Regardless Of Law, Through The Implementation Of Systems And Standards.

As I Said Before, [patriotism] Is Distinct From Acting To Benefit The Government - A Distinction That's Increasingly Lost Today.

The 'music' Is Not An Open Court And A Fair Trial.

These [nsa] Programs Were Never About Terrorism: They're About Economic Spying, Social Control, And Diplomatic Manipulation. They're About Power.

The Consent Of The Governed Is Not Consent If It Is Not Informed.

Consent Of The Governed

The Nsa Was Actually Concerned Back In The Time Of The Crypto-wars With Improving American Security. Nowadays, We See That Their Priority Is Weakening Our Security, Just So They Have A Better Chance Of Keeping An Eye On Us.

Sometimes That Irrational Commitment To Principle Is What Society Needs To Survive. Whenever You Talk About Radicalism, Whenever You Talk About Activism, Whenever You Talk About Progressive Activity, That Sort Of Moves The Measure Of Liberty In Human Society Forward, Makes Us All Enjoy A Better Standard Of Liberty, It Typically Starts Out Criminal. It Typically Starts Out A Little Bit Shaky, And Rather Radical. And That's Irrational To Put Yourself Up To Do That.

Privacy Is A Function Of Liberty.

My Whole Model, From The Beginning, Was Not To Personally Publish A Single Document. I Provided These Documents To Journalists Because I Didn't Want My Biases To Decide What's In The Public Interest And What Is Not.

When I Talk About The Polling, I'm Talking About The Principles. It Shows These Officials Are Knowingly Attempting To Shift Public Opinion, Even Though They Know What They Say Is Not Factual.

By Putting These Sort Of Lines Around What Ideas Are Proper Or Improper, We Lose Things.

There Are Proxies, Proxy Servers On The Internet, And This Is Very Typical For Hackers To Use. They Create What Are Called Proxy Chains Where They Gain Access To A Number Of Different Systems Around The World, Sometimes By Hacking These, And They Use Them As Sort Of Relay Boxes.

Are Our Competitors - For Example, China, Which Is A Deeply Authoritarian Nation - Becoming More Authoritarian Or More Liberal Over Time?

There Are Times Throughout History And It Doesn't Take Long For Either An American Or A German, To Think About Times In The History Of Their Country Where The Law Provided The Government To Do Things Which Were Not Right.

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

There Are Unquestionable Violations Of Our Constitution.

We Need To Think About Encryption Not As This Sort Of Arcane, Black Art. It's A Basic Protection.

I Know The Media Likes To Personalize Political Debates, And I Know The Government Will Demonize Me.

The Immoral Cannot Be Made Moral Through The Use Of Secret Law.

Being Confronted With The Realization That Work You Intended To Benefit People Is Being Used Against Them Has A Radicalizing Effect.

Allowing The U.s. Government To Intimidate Its People With Threats Of Retaliation For Revealing Wrongdoing Is Contrary To The Public Interest.

As A Technologist, I See The Trends, And I See That Automation Inevitably Is Going To Mean Fewer And Fewer Jobs. And If We Do Not Find A Way To Provide A Basic Income For People Who Have No Work, Or No Meaningful Work, We’re Going To Have Social Unrest That Could Get People Killed. When We Have Increasing Production - Year After Year After Year - Some Of That Needs To Be Reinvested In Society.

If The Government Or The Parties Won't Address Our Needs, We Will. It's About Direct Action, Even Civil Disobedience.

We Have To Call Mass Surveillance Mass Surveillance. We Can't Let Governments Around The World Redefine, And Sort Of Weasel Their Way Out Of It By Saying This Is Bulk Collection.

Microsoft Is In A Court Battle With The Department Of Justice. The Doj Is Saying, "we Want Information From Your Data Center In Ireland. It's Not About A Us Citizen, But We Want It." Microsoft Said, "ok, Fine. Go To A Judge In Ireland. Ask Them For A Warrant. We Have A Mutual Legal-assistance Treaty. They'll Do It. Give That To Us, And We'll Provide The Information To You In Accordance With Irish Laws."

A Child Born Today Will Grow Up With No Conception Of Privacy At All. They'll Never Know What It Means To Have A Private Moment To Themselves An Unrecorded, Unanalysed Thought. And That's A Problem Because Privacy Matters, Privacy Is What Allows Us To Determine Who We Are And Who We Want To Be.

We Have Got A Cia Station Just Up The Road – The Consulate Here In Hong Kong – And I Am Sure They Are Going To Be Busy For The Next Week. And That Is A Concern I Will Live With For The Rest Of My Life, However Long That Happens To Be.

Government Spying

When People Say, "i Have Nothing To Hide," What They're Saying Is, "my Rights Don't Matter."

No One Would Argue That It's In The United States' Interest To Have Independent Knowledge Of The Plans And Intentions Of Foreign Countries. But We Need To Think About Where To Draw The Line On These Kind Of Operations So We're Not Always Attacking Our Allies, The People We Trust, The People We Need To Rely On, And To Have Them In Turn Rely On Us.

A Zero-day Exploit Is A Method Of Hacking A System. It's Sort Of A Vulnerability That Has An Exploit Written For It, Sort Of A Key And A Lock That Go Together To A Given Software Package. It Could Be An Internet Web Server. It Could Be Microsoft Office. It Could Be Adobe Reader Or It Could Be Facebook.

Congress Hasn't Declared War On The Countries - The Majority Of Them Are Our Allies - But Without Asking For Public Permission, Nsa Is Running Network Operations Against Them That Affect Millions Of Innocent People. And For What? So We Can Have Secret Access To A Computer In A Country We're Not Even Fighting?

We Are A Representative Democracy. But How Did We Get There? We Got There Through Direct Action. And That's Enshrined In Our Constitution And In Our Values.

I Describe It As Tribalism Because They're Very Tightly Woven Communities. Lack Of Civility Is Part Of It, Because That's How Internet Tribes Behave. We See This More And More In Electoral Politics, Which Have Become Increasingly Poisonous.

You Are Also Asked To Take An Oath, And That's The Oath Of Service. The Oath Of Service Is Not To Secrecy, But To The Constitution - To Protect It Against All Enemies, Foreign And Domestic. That's The Oath That I Kept, That James Clapper And Former Nsa Director Keith Alexander Did Not. You Raise Your Hand And You Take The Oath In Your Class When You Are On Board. All Government Officials Are Made To Do It Who Work For The Intelligence Agencies - At Least, That's Where I Took The Oath.

I Built My Own Studio. I Don't Have The Professional Language To Describe It Because I'm Not A Videographer - But I'm A Technician. So I Get The Camera, I Get All The Things That Translate The Camera To The Computer, I Set Up A Live Session, I Do The Security On It, I Set Up A Background So I Can Key It Out, Like Newscasters Do, And Replace It With Whatever I Want - And I Can Be Anywhere I Need To Be.

I've Got More Than Enough For My Needs [for Social Life In Moscow], Let's Put It That Way.

What Has A Great Value To Us As A Nation Is The Internet Itself. The Internet Is Critical Infrastructure To The United States. We Use The Internet For Every Communication That Businesses Rely On Every Day.

My Sole Motive Is To Inform The Public As To That Which Is Done In Their Name And That Which Is Done Against Them.

The United States Has Faced Threats From Criminal Groups, From Terrorists, From Spies Throughout Our History, And We Have Limited Our Responses. We Haven't Resorted To Total War Every Time We Have A Conflict Around The World, Because That Restraint Is What Defines Us. That Restraint Is What Gives Us The Moral Standing To Lead The World.

Using The Language Of Heroism, Calling Daniel Ellsberg A Hero, And Calling The Other People Who Made Great Sacrifices Heroes - Even Though What They Have Done Is Heroic - Is To Distinguish Them From The Civic Duty They Performed, And Excuses The Rest Of Us From The Same Civic Duty To Speak Out When We See Something Wrong, When We Witness Our Government Engaging In Serious Crimes, Abusing Power, Engaging In Massive Historic Violations Of The Constitution Of The United States. We Have To Speak Out Or We Are Party To That Bad Action.

Lawyers From The Nsa, As Well As The Uk's Gchq, Work Very Hard To Search For Loopholes In Laws And Constitutional Protections That They Can Use To Justify Indiscriminate, Dragnet Surveillance Operations That Were At Best Unwittingly Authorized By Lawmakers.

When We Look At The Full-on Mass Surveillance Watching Everyone In The Country, In The United States, It Doesn't Work. It Didn't Stop The Attacks In Boston. The Marathon Bombings. Where Again, We Knew Who These Individuals Were. It Didn't Stop The Underwear Bomber, Whose Father Walked Into An Embassy And Warned Us About This Individual Before He Walked Onto An Airplane. And It's Not Going To Stop The Next Attacks Either. Because Again, They're Not Public Safety Programmes. They're Spying Programmes. They Are Valuable For Spying.

The Way The United States Intelligence Community Operates Is It Doesn't Limit Itself To The Protection Of The Homeland. It Doesn't Limit Itself To Countering Terrorist Threats, Countering Nuclear Proliferation. It's Also Used For Economic Espionage, For Political Spying To Gain Some Knowledge Of What Other Countries Are Doing.

I Don't Think I Have Committed A Crime Outside The Domain Of The Us.

When Laura Poitras Asked Me If She Could Film Our Encounters, I Was Extremely Reluctant. I’m Grateful That I Allowed Her To Persuade Me. The Result Is A Brave And Brilliant Film That Deserves The Honor And Recognition It Has Received. My Hope Is That This Award Will Encourage More People To See The Film And Be Inspired By Its Message That Ordinary Citizens, Working Together, Can Change The World.

On The Other Hand, The Internet Is There To Fill Needs That People Have For Information And Socialization. We Get This Sort Of Identification Thing Going On Nowadays Because It's A Very Fractious Time. We Live In A Time Of Troubles.

Someone Responding To The Story Said 'real Spies Do Not Speak Like That'. Well, I Am A Spy And That Is How They Talk. Whenever We Had A Debate In The Office On How To Handle Crimes, They Do Not Defend Due Process - They Defend Decisive Action. They Say It Is Better To Kick Someone Out Of A Plane Than Let These People Have A Day In Court. It Is An Authoritarian Mindset In General.

As A General Rule, So Long As You Have Any Choice At All, You Should Never Route Through Or Peer With The Uk Under Any Circumstances. Their Fibers Are Radioactive, And Even The Queen's Selfies To The Pool Boy Get Logged.

There's A Real Danger In The Way Our Representative Government Functions Today. It Functions Properly Only When Paired With Accountability.

I'm Still Alive, And I Don't Lose Sleep Because I Have Done What I Feel I Needed To Do, It Was The Right Thing To Do And I Am Not Going To Be Afraid.

The Most Important Thing To The United States Is Not Being Able To Attack Our Adversaries, The Most Important Thing Is To Be Able To Defend Ourselves. And We Can't Do That As Long As We're Subverting Our Own Security Standards For The Sake Of Surveillance.

Radicals Are Not Going To Disappear. They're Going To Go Underground. They're Going To Be Hardened. And They're Not Going To Be Exposed To Contrary Ideas Made By Educated People Who Can Make Real, Convincing, And Persuasive Arguments To Deradicalise These People.

The Internet Is Shared Critical Infrastructure For Everyone On Earth. It's Not Supposed To Be A Domain Of Warfare. We're Not Supposed To Be Putting The Unied States' Economy On The Frontlines In The Battleground.

For People Who Aren't Familiar With My Background, I Didn't Graduate High School. My Career High Salary Was About $200,000. My Last Position Was About $122,000. For A Guy Without A High School Diploma, That's Pretty Good.

The State Says: "well, In Order For It To Be Legitimate Civil Disobedience, You Have To Follow These Rules." They Put Us In "free-speech Zones"; They Say You Can Only Do It At This Time, And In This Way, And You Can't Interrupt The Functioning Of The Government. They Limit The Impact That Civil Disobedience Can Achieve. We Have To Remember That Civil Disobedience Must Be Disobedience If It's To Be Effective.

The Us Government Still Has No Idea What Documents I Have Because Encryption Works

One Of The Reasons That I Came Forward And Sort Burned Of My Life To The Ground, And I Can't Go Back And See My Family In The United States - I Obviously Lost My Job, Which I Was Quite Comfortable With. I Lost My Home. It Was Because I Felt There Was No Alternative.

You Have To Remember The Way The Internet Works, When You Communicate With The Server, It's Very Likely Not In Your Country. It's Somewhere Else In The World.

The Only Way I Could Be Extradited Is Through The Principle Of What My Lawyers Call "politics Trumps Law."

The Only Thing I Fear Is The Harmful Effects On My Family, Who I Won't Be Able To Help Any More. That's What Keeps Me Up At Night.

Government Spying

If We Don't Do Anything, If We Go Along With The Status Quo, We Are Going To Have A Mass Surveillance World.

Chelsea Manning Got Thirty-five Years In Prison, While I'm Still Free.

Radicalism And Extremism, While They Are Dangers, They Exist In Every Society On Some Level.

The Majority Of People In Developed Countries Spend At Least Some Time Interacting With The Internet, And Governments Are Abusing That Necessity In Secret To Extend Their Powers Beyond What Is Necessary And Appropriate.

I Don't Spend All Day Running Hand-on-hat From Shadowy Figures - I'm In Exile.

I Believe Strongly That Occupy Wall Street Had Such Limits Because The Local Authorities Were Able To Enforce, Basically In Our Imaginations, An Image Of What Proper Civil Disobedience Is - One That Is Simply Ineffective.

They Are Intent On Making Every Conversation And Every Form Of Behaviour In The World Known To Them.

Government Spying

Do You Check It When You Travel, Do You Check It When You're Just At Home? They'd Be Able To Tell Something Called Your 'pattern Of Life.' When Are You Doing These Kind Of Activities? When Do You Wake Up? When Do You Go To Sleep? What Other Phones Are Around You When You Wake Up And Go To Sleep? Are You With Someone Who's Not Your Wife?

Ever Since I've Been Here [in Russia], My Life Has Been Consumed With Work That's Actually Fulfilling And Satisfying.

There Have Been So Many Individuals Who Have Really Put A Lot On The Line. That They've Sacrificed So Much To Try To Protect The Principle Of Source Protection In The Journalism World. And I Think Julian Assange, And Wikileaks, And Sarah Harrison Have Really Been Extraordinary In Standing Up For That.

If You Seek To Help, Join The Open Source Community And Fight To Keep The Spirit Of The Press Alive And The Internet Free. I Have Been To The Darkest Corners Of Government, And What They Fear Is Light.

I Have Had Many Opportunities To Flee Hk, But I Would Rather Stay And Fight The United States Government In The Courts, Because I Have Faith In Hong Kong's Rule Of Law.

The Rule Of Law Doesn't Mean The Police Are In Charge, But That We All Answer To The Same Laws.

There Is A Technical Solution To Every Political Problem...

We've Got Crazy Little Sites Going Up Against Established Media Behemoths.

There Are Even A Few [people] Who Still Honestly Believe I Sold Information To [vladimir] Putin - Like Personally, In Exchange For Asylum. And This Is After The Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Who Gets To Read The Nsa's Reporting On My Activities Every Morning, Said All Of These Conspiracies Are Delusional.

People Say That [i'm A Celebrity], But I've Only Had To Sign Autographs For "civ-libs" Types. And I Autograph Court Orders.

I'm Familiar With Andrei Sakharov Reputation, But I Don't Know His Personal History At All.

Personal History

The Greatest Fear That I Have Regarding The Outcome For America Of These Disclosures Is That Nothing Will Change.

I Wasn't Trying To Change The Laws Or Slow Down The Machine. Maybe I Should Have. My Critics Say That I Was Not Revolutionary Enough. But They Forget That I Am A Product Of The System. I Worked Those Desks, I Know Those People And I Still Have Some Faith In Them, That The Services Can Be Reformed.

When Clapper Raised His Hand And Lied To The American Public, Was Anyone Tried? Were Any Charges Brought? Within 24 Hours Of Going Public, I Had Three Charges Against Me.

I Don't Think It's Going To Be Related To Social Or Economic Policies; It's Going To Be The Fact That [barack Obama] Said Let's Go Forward, Not Backward, In Regard To The Violations Of Law That Occurred Under The Bush Administration.

It Is Afraid Of An Informed, Angry Public Demanding The Constitutional Government It Was Promised - And It Should Be.

When It Is Made To Appear As Though Not Knowing Everything About Everyone Is An Existential Crisis, Then You Feel That Bending The Rules Is Okay. Once People Hate You For Bending Those Rules, Breaking Them Becomes A Matter Of Survival.

Knowing Everything

The Government Doesn't Want Us To Know What They're Doing, How They're Interpreting The Law, How They're Interpreting And Redefining Their Powers, And Increasingly, How They're Redefining The Boundaries Of Our Rights And Our Liberties, Broadly, Socially, And Categorically Without Our Involvement.

I Can Do More Good Outside Of Prison... This Country Is Worth Dying For.

When It Comes To Cyber Warfare, We Have More To Lose Than Any Other Nation On Earth. The Technical Sector Is The Backbone Of The American Economy, And If We Start Engaging In These Kind Of Behaviors, In These Kind Of Attacks, We're Setting A Standard, We're Creating A New International Norm Of Behavior That Says This Is What Nations Do. This Is What Developed Nations Do.

Governments Cannot Require Individuals, They Cannot Require The Public As A Body, And They Cannot Require Corporations To Make Investigation And Law Enforcement Easy For Them In A Liberal Society.

Getting Inequality Out There Into The Consciousness Was Important. All These Political Pundits Now Talking About The 2014 And 2016 Elections Are Talking About Inequality.

The Surveillance Revelations Are Critically Important Because They Revealed That Our Rights Are Being Redefined In Secret, By Secret Courts That Were Never Intended To Have That Role - Without The Consent Of The Public, Without Even The Awareness Of The Majority Of Our Political Representatives.

One Journalist Said That Everybody In Russia Is Miserable. Russia Is A Terrible Place. And I'm Going To End Up Miserable And I'm Going To Be A Drunk And I'm Never Going To Do Anything. I Don't Drink. I've Never Been Drunk In My Life. And They Talk About Russia Like It's The Worst Place On Earth. Russia's Great.

[bill] Binney Will Argue With You All Day About Thinthread, But His Idea Was That It Would Collect Everything About Everybody But Be Immediately Encrypted So No One Could Read It. Only A Court Could Give Intelligence Officials The Key To Decrypt It. The Idea Was To Find A Kind Of A Compromise Between [privacy Rights And] The Assertion That If You Don't Collect Things As They Happen, You Won't Have Them Later - Because What The Nsa Really Wants Is The Capability Of Retrospective Investigation.

We Have To Argue Forcefully And Demand That The Government Recognise That These Programmes Do Not Prevent - Mass Surveillance Does Not Prevent Acts Of Terrorism.

[our System Of Education ]not Designed To Create Critical Thinkers.

These Activities Can Be Misconstrued, Misinterpreted, And Used To Harm You As An Individual Even Without The Government Having Any Intent To Do You Wrong.

Cyber Command Is Supposed To Be Defending Our Critical Infrastructure At Home, But They Are Spending So Much Time Looking At How To Attack Networks, How To Break Systems, And How To Turn Things Off. I Don't Think It Adds Up As Representing A Defensive Team.

To Do That They, The Nsa Specifically, Targets The Communications Of Everyone. It Ingests Them By Default. It Collects Them In Its System And It Filters Them And It Analyses Them And It Measures Them And It Stores Them For Periods Of Time Simply Because That's The Easiest, Most Efficient, And Most Valuable Way To Achieve These Ends. So While They May Be Intending To Target Someone Associated With A Foreign Government Or Someone They Suspect Of Terrorism, They're Collecting You're Communications To Do So.

A Lot Of People In 2008 Voted For Obama. I Did Not Vote For Him. I Voted For A Third Party. But I Believed In Obama's Promises. He Continued With The Policies Of His Predecessor.

The Sad Truth Is That Societies That Demand Whistleblowers Be Martyrs Often Find Themselves Without Either, And Always When It Matters The Most.

Suspicionless Surveillance Has No Place In A Democracy. The Next 60 Days Are A Historic Opportunity To Rein In The Nsa, But The Only One Who Can End The Worst Of Its Abuses Is You. Call Your Representatives And Tell Them That The Unconstitutional 'bulk Collection' Of Americans' Private Records Under Section 215 Of The Patriot Act Must End.

I Hope You Have Read The Election Programme Of The Labour Party...this Is Not Socialism. It Is Bolshevism Run Mad.

Properly Implemented Strong Crypto Systems Are One Of The Few Things That You Can Rely On.

The New York Times And The Guardian Came Out And Said, "hey, Clemency For Snowden." But For Me, The Key - And I've Said This From The Beginning: It's Not About Me. I Don't Care If I Get Clemency. I Don't Care What Happens To Me.

I Talk To People In The Aclu Office In New York All The Time. I'm Able To Participate In The Debate And To Campaign For Reform. I'm Just The First To Come Forward In The Manner That I Did And Succeed.

When People Conceptualize A Cyber-attack, They Do Tend To Think About Parts Of The Critical Infrastructure Like Power Plants, Water Supplies, And Similar Sort Of Heavy Infrastructure, Critical Infrastructure Areas. And They Could Be Hit, As Long As They're Network Connected, As Long As They Have Some Kind Of Systems That Interact With Them That Could Be Manipulated From Internet Connection.

Hong Kong Has A Reputation For Freedom In Spite Of The People's Republic Of China. It Has A Strong Tradition Of Free Speech.

All Those People Who Went Out [to Occupy Wall Street] Missed Work, Didn't Get Paid. Those Were Individuals Who Were Already Feeling The Effects Of Inequality, So They Didn't Have A Lot To Lose. And Then The Individuals Who Were Louder, More Disruptive And, In Many Ways, More Effective At Drawing Attention To Their Concerns Were Immediately Castigated By Authorities. They Were Cordoned Off, Pepper-sprayed, Thrown In Jail.

I Have Used Mass Surveillance To Target People, So I Do Know How It Works.

The Courts Were Afraid To Challenge Executive Declarations Of What Would Happen. Now, Over The Last Year, We Have Seen - In Almost Every Single Court That Has Had This Sort Of National-security Case - That They Have Become Markedly More Skeptical.

All I Wanted Was For The Public To Be Able To Have A Say In How They Are Governed. That Is A Milestone We Left A Long Time Ago.

You Simply Have To Eventually Fall Under Suspicion From Somebody Even By A Wrong Call. And Then They Can Use This System To Go Back In Time And Scrutinize Every Decision You've Ever Made, Every Friend You've Ever Discussed Something With. And Attack You On That Basis To Sort To Derive Suspicion From An Innocent Life And Paint Anyone In The Context Of A Wrongdoer.

Government Spying

And That's Not Something I'm Willing To Support, It's Not Something I'm Willing To Build And It's Not Something I'm Willing To Live Under.

Us Administration Does Not Want Me To Return. People Forget How I Ended Up In Russia. They Waited Until I Departed Hong Kong To Cancel My Passport In Order To Trap Me In Russia, Because It's The Most Effective Attack They Have Against Me, Given The Political Climate In The United States.

I Love My Country. I Love My Family. And I Have Dedicated My Life To Both Of Them.

I Love My Family

I Don't Go Out And Play Football And Stuff - That's Not Me. I Want To Think, I Want To Build, I Want To Talk, I Want To Create.

I Took What I Knew To The Public, So What Affects All Of Us Can Be Discussed By All Of Us In The Light Of Day, And I Asked The World For Justice.

That's One Of The Biggest Issues That We See In The Question Of Governments Right Now, I Think, In The Western World. Is That Increasingly All Of Our Elected Officials Are Pulled From The Same Class. These Aren't Normal People. I Don't Want To Say They're All Terrible People, But At The Same Time, They're Not Like You And Me. These Are People Who Have Sort Of A Nine To Five Working History.

I Don't Want The Stage. I'm Terrified Of Giving These Talking Heads Some Distraction, Some Excuse To Jeopardize, Smear, And Delegitimize A Very Important Movement.

I Must Say I'm Surprised By How Skeptical Of The [barack] Obama Administration The Nation Has Been.

When We Have Some Horrible Terrorist Attacks Happen In Some Country We See In The Recording That Follows, That The Intelligence Community Already Knew About These People In Advance. We Know That These Countries Were Involved In Intelligence Sharing Premiums, That They Benefited From Mass Surveillance, And Yet They Didn't Stop The Attacks. Yet At The Same Time We Immediately See Intelligence Officials Running To The Newspapers And Claiming That We Need More Surveillance, That We Need More Intrusion, That We Need More Expense Of Powers Because It Could Have Stopped An Attack.

You Shouldn't Send An Email From A Computer That's Associated With You If You Don't Want It To Be Tracked Back To You. You Don't Want To Hack The Power Plant From Your House If You Don't Want Them To Follow The Trail Back And See Your Ip Address.

We've Already Seen, In Practically Every Country Around The World Where These Issues Have Been Covered, That The General Public Has Recoiled At The Ideology Behind These Programs.

We Don't Have To Ask For Our Privacy, We Can Take It Back.

This Whole Pre-criminal Investigation, Where We Watch Everybody, All The Time, Just In Case, Is Really An Extraordinary Departure From The Western Liberal Tradition.

When It Comes To Political Engagement, I'm Not A Politician - I'm An Engineer.

I'm Ultimately Satisfied That We Know A Little Bit More About How The World Really Works.

Imagine, If You Will, You're Sitting At My Desk In Hawaii. You Have Access To The Entire World, As Far As You Can See It. Last Several Days, Content Of Internet Communications. Every Email That's Sent. Every Website That's Visited By Every Individual. Every Text Message That Somebody Sends On Their Phone. Every Phone Call They Make.

I Don't Want To Live In A Society That Does These Sort Of Things.

If The United States Is Promoting The Development Of Exploits, Of Vulnerabilities, Of Insecurity In This Critical Infrastructure, And We're Not Fixing It When We Find It, Instead We Put It On The Shelf So We Can Use It The Next Time We Want To Launch An Attack Against Some Foreign Country. We're Leaving Ourselves At Risk.

If You Ask Anybody At Cyber Command Or Look At Any Of The Job Listings For Openings For Their Positions, You'll See That The One Thing They Don't Prioritize Is Computer Network Defense. It's All About Computer Network Attack And Computer Network Exploitation At Cyber Command.

We Have The Means And We Have The Technology To End Mass Surveillance Without Any Legislative Action At All, Without Any Policy Changes.

[occupy Wall Street] Had An Impact On Consciousness. It Was Not Effective In Realizing Change.

People In Both Parties From The Congressional Intelligence Committees - All These Co-opted Officials Who Play Cheerleader For Spy Agencies - Go On These Sunday Shows And They Say: "snowden Was A Traitor. He Works Against Americans. He Works For The Chinese. Oh, Wait, He Left Hong Kong - He Works For The Russians."

Terrorism Kills Far Fewer People Than Cigarettes, Or Alcohol, Or Car Accidents. But We Don't See Ourselves Restructuring Society And Lives In Order To Make Those Threats Go Away.

Our Founders Did Not Write That 'we Hold These Truths To Be Self-evident, That All Us Persons Are Created Equal.'

The Big Tech Companies Understood That The Government Had Not Only Damaged American Principles, It Had Hurt Their Businesses.

We Can Plant Bugs In Machines. Once You Go On The Network, I Can Identify Your Machine. You Will Never Be Safe Whatever Protections You Put In Place.

The United States Need To Be Focusing More On Creating A More Secure, More Reliable, More Robust, And More Trusted Internet, Not One That's Weaker, Not One That Relies On This Systemic Model Of Exploiting Every Vulnerability, Every Threat Out There.

The United States Is More Reliant On The Technical Systems. We're More Reliant On The Critical Infrastructure Of The Internet Than Any Other Nation Out There. And When There's Such A Low Barrier To Entering The Domain Of Cyber-attacks We're Starting A Fight That We Can't Win.

It's Becoming Less And Less The National Security Agency And More And More The National Surveillance Agency. It's Gaining More Offensive Powers With Each Passing Year.

At The Trial Of Chelsea Manning, The Government Could Point To No Case Of Specific Damage That Had Been Caused By The Massive Revelation Of Classified Information. The Charges Are A Reaction To The Government's Embarrassment More Than Genuine Concern About These Activities, Or They Would Substantiate What Harms Were Done.

Genuine Concern

We Have Seen Enough Criminality On The Part Of Government. It Is Hypocritical To Make This Allegation Against Me. They Have Narrowed The Public Sphere Of Influence.

Sphere Of Influence

Extremists Are Not Going To Disappear.

Something We Have To Remember Is That Everything About The Internet Is Interconnected. All Of Our Systems Are Not Just Common To Us Because Of The Network Links Between Them, But Because Of The Software Packages, Because Of The Hardware Devices That Comprise It. The Same Router That's Deployed In The United States Is Deployed In China.

While The Us Constitution Marks These Programs As Illegal, My Government Argues That Secret Court Rulings, Which The World Is Not Permitted To See, Somehow Legitimize An Illegal Affair. These Rulings Simply Corrupt The Most Basic Notion Of Justice - That It Must Be Seen To Be Done. The Immoral Cannot Be Made Moral Through The Use Of Secret Law.

Us Has To Be Able To Rely On A Safe And Interconnected Internet In Order To Compete With Other Countries.

Citizens Have To Fight Suppression Of Information On Matters Of Vital Public Importance. To Tell The Truth Is Not A Crime.

Many Of Our Ally States Don't Have These Constitutional Protections - In The Uk, In New Zealand, In Australia. They've Lost The Right To Be Free From Unreasonable Search And Seizure Without Probable Cause. All Of Those Countries, In The Wake Of These Surveillance Revelations, Rushed Through Laws That Were Basically Ghostwritten By The National Security Agency To Enable Mass Surveillance Without Court Oversight, Without All Of The Standard Checks And Balances That One Would Expect.

By Creating A Self-policing, Self-reporting, Sort Of Self-monitoring Culture Through Law, Through Statute, And Imposing That On The Academic World, I Think Not Only Are We Losing A Significant Measure Of Freedom In Academic Traditions And In Our Civil Society, But We're Actually Making Ourselves Less Competitive With Every Other Country Around The World That Does Not Do That. Because That's Where Researchers Are Going To Go And That's Where Academics Are Going To Go. And Ultimately, That's Where Breakthroughs Are Going To Occur.

It's Ok If We Wiretap Osama Bin Laden. I Want To Know What He's Planning - Obviously Not Him Nowadays, But That Kind Of Thing. I Don't Care If It's A Pope Or A Bin Laden. As Long As Investigators Must Go To A Judge - An Independent Judge, A Real Judge, Not A Secret Judge - And Make A Showing That There's Probable Cause To Issue A Warrant, Then They Can Do That. And That's How It Should Be Done.

Society Really Seems To Have Developed An Unquestioning Obedience Towards Spooky Types… Did We Get To Where We Are Today Via A Slippery Slope That Was Entirely Within Our Control To Stop? Or Was It A Relatively Instantaneous Sea Change That Sneaked In Undetected Because Of Pervasive Government Secrecy?

The Public Needs To Know The Kinds Of Things A Government Does In Its Name, Or The 'consent Of The Governed' Is Meaningless... The Consent Of The Governed Is Not Consent If It Is Not Informed.

There Is More Action In Some Other Countries. In Germany, They've Called For A Very Serious Inquiry That's Discovering More And More. They've Just Discovered A Significant Violation Of The German Constitution That Had Been Concealed From The Parliament.

When It Comes To The Internet, When It Comes To The United States' Technical Economy, We Have More To Lose Than Any Other Nation On Earth.

The Only Reason I Do These Interviews - I Hate Talking About Myself, I Hate Doing This Stuff - Is Because Incredibly Well-meaning People, Whom I Respect And Trust, Tell Me That This Will Help Bring About Positive Changes. It's Not Going To Cause A Sea Change, But It Will Benefit The Public.

We Can Still Publicly Post A Message To Facebook That's Globally Readable. But We Could Also Adjust Things So That They Can Only Be Shared With Those Closest To Us, And The Confident That This Is Enforced Through Both Legal And A Systemic Standards-based Protection.

The Fbi Was Creating A World Where Citizens Rely On Apple To Defend Their Rights, Rather Than The Other Way Around.

We Do Not Live In A Revolutionary Time. People Are Not Prepared To Contest Power.

After 9/11, Many Of The Most Important News Outlets In America Abdicated Their Role As A Check To Power - The Journalistic Responsibility To Challenge The Excesses Of Government - For Fear Of Being Seen As Unpatriotic And Punished In The Market During A Period Of Heightened Nationalism.

I Believe That At This Point In History, The Greatest Danger To Our Freedom And Way Of Life Comes From The Reasonable Fear Of Omniscient State Powers Kept In Check By Nothing More Than Policy Documents.

Government Spying

The Problem Is When [the State] Monitor All Of Us, En Masse, All Of The Time, Without Any Specific Justification For Intercepting In The First Place, Without Any Specific Judicial Showing That There's A Probable Cause For That Infringement Of Our Rights.

The United States Need To Put Internet Processes, Policies, And Procedures In Place With Real Laws That Forbid Going Beyond The Borders Of What's Reasonable To Ensure That The Only Time That We And Other Countries Around The World Exercise These Authorities Are When It Is Absolutely Necessary.

I Don't Want To Live In A World Where Everything That I Say, Everything I Do, Everyone I Talk To, Every Expression Of Creativity Or Love Or Friendship Is Recorded.

I'm Not A Communist, A Socialist Or A Radical. But These Issues Have To Be Addressed.

The Majority Of Terrorist Attacks That Have Been Disrupted In The United States Have Been Disrupted Due To Things Like The Time Square Bomber, Who Was Caught By A Hotdog Vendor, Not A Mass Surveillance Program, Not A Cyber-espionage Campaign.

We Don't Have A Great Clash Of Civilizations, A Clash Of Ideologies, A Clash Of Alternative Models, Where Governments Thought To Themselves, If We Go Too Far, If We Sort Of Trample Unreasonably On Rights, We'll Give Birth To A Political Movement Which Will Cost Us Our Credibility, And Will Possibly Cost Us Our Offices, Because People Will Vote For The Other Team, The Other Guys.

I Can't In Good Conscience Allow The U.s. Government To Destroy Privacy, Internet Freedom And Basic Liberties For People Around The World With This Massive Surveillance Machine They're Secretly Building.

In The United States, There Hasn't Been Much Legislative Change On The Surveillance Issue, Although There Are Some Tepid Proposals.

I Grew Up With The Understanding That The World I Lived In Was One Where People Enjoyed A Sort Of Freedom To Communicate With Each Other In Privacy, Without It Being Monitored, Without It Being Measured Or Analyzed Or Sort Of Judged By These Shadowy Figures Or Systems, Any Time They Mention Anything That Travels Across Public Lines.

I Don't Want To Live In A World Where There's No Privacy, And Therefore No Room For Intellectual Exploration And Creativity.

The New Iphone Encryption Does Not Stop Them From Accessing Copies Of Your Pictures Or Whatever That Are Uploaded To, For Example, Apple's Cloud Service, Which Are Still Legally Accessible Because Those Are Not Encrypted. It Only Protects What's Physically On The Phone.

I Understand That I Will Be Made To Suffer For My Actions, And That The Return Of This Information To The Public Marks My End.

Government Spying

There Was A Real Choice When [barack Obama] Became President. It Was A Very Difficult Choice - To Say, "we're Not Going To Hold Senior Officials To Account With The Same Laws That Every Other Citizen In The Country Is Held To," Or "this Is A Nation That Believes In The Rule Of Law."

We Decentralise The Ability To Decide The Level Of Publicity That's Attached To Any Of Our Communications.

There Have Been Times Throughout American History Where What Is Right Is Not The Same As What Is Legal. Sometimes To Do The Right Thing You Have To Break The Law.

American History

Internet Exchanges And Internet Service Providers - International Fiber Optic Landing Points - These Are The Key Tools That Governments Go After In Order To Enable Their Programs Of Mass Surveillance. If They Want To Be Able To Watch The Entire Population Of A Country Instead Of A Single Individual, You Have To Go After Those Bulk Interchanges.

In America, We Collect More Digital Communications From America Than We Do From The Russians.

I'm Not A Spy, Which Is The Real Question

I Do Not Expect To See Home Again.

Government Spying

It's Much Easier, I Think, To Protect Communications While They're In Transit At Least, Than It Is To Enforce Legislation In Every Country In The World To Say That You Can't Do This.

Has The Center Of Gravity Shifted Such That All Governments Have Greater Powers And Fewer Restrictions Than They Ever Had, And Are Empowered By Technology In A Way That No Government Ever Was In The Past?

[sovereignty] Would Break The American Monopoly, But It Would Also Break Internet Business, Because You'd Have To Have A Data Center In Every Country. And Data Centers Are Tremendously Expensive, A Big Capital Investment.

Internet Business

What We're Really Debating Is Not Security Versus Liberty, It's Security Versus Surveillance. When We Talk About Electronic Interception, The Way That Surveillance Works Is It Preys On The Weakness Of Protections That Are Being Applied To All Of Our Communications. The Manner In Which They're Protected.

We Have The Right Of Revolution. Revolution Does Not Always Have To Be Weapons And Warfare; It's Also About Revolutionary Ideas.

There Were No Whistleblower Protections That Would've Protected Me - And That's Known To Everybody In The Intelligence Community. There Are No Proper Channels For Making This Information Available When The System Fails Comprehensively.

If We Can't Have An Open And Honest Debate About The Value Of Ideas In A University In Glasgow, Or Boston, Or Anywhere Else In The World, Then Where Are They Going To Go?

I'm Not A Politician, And I Do Not Think I Am As Effective In This Way As People Who Actually Prepare For It - Is To Focus On Technical Reform, Because I Speak The Language Of Technology. I Spoke With Tim Berners-lee, The Guy Who Invented The World Wide Web. We Agree On The Necessity For This Generation To Create What He Calls The Magna Carta For The Internet. We Want To Say What "digital Rights" Should Be. What Values Should We Be Protecting, And How Do We Assert Them.

The [george W.] Bush Administration Marked A Very Serious And Profoundly Negative Turning Point - Not Just For The Nation, But For The International Order, Because We Started To Govern On The Idea Of "might Makes Right." And That's A Very Old, Toxic And Infectious Idea.

Arguing That You Don't Care About Privacy Because You Have Nothing To Hide Is No Different Than Saying You Don't Care About Free Speech Because You Have Nothing To Say.

A Lot Of People In 2008 Voted For Obama. I Did Not Vote For Him. I Voted For A Third Party. But I Believed In Obama's Promises.

I Don't Think Political Reform Is Likely To Succeed. [senators Tom] Udall And [ron] Wyden, On The Intelligence Committee, Have Been Sounding The Alarm, But They Are A Minority.

A Child Born Today Will Grow Up With No Conception Of Privacy At All.

I've Talked To A Lot Of Pretty Good Lawyers Around The World. I'm Non-extraditable. That's The Real Reason The Us Government Was Pissed Off, Even When I Was Initially In Hong Kong.

The Nsa Has Built An Infrastructure That Allows It To Intercept Almost Everything.

Government Spying

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